The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
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Sax Rohmer >> The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
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"Somehow I got upon my feet, or dreamed I did--God knows where dreaming ended
and reality began. Gentlemen maybe you'll conclude I went mad last night,
but as I stood holding on to the bedrail I heard the blood throbbing through
my arteries with a noise like a screw-propeller. I started laughing.
The laughter issued from my lips with a shrill whistling sound that pierced
me with physical pain and seemed to wake the echoes of the whole block.
I thought myself I was going mad, and I tried to command my will--
to break the power of the chloral--for I concluded that I had accidentally
taken an overdose.
"Then the walls of my bedroom started to recede, till at last I
stood holding on to a bed which had shrunk to the size of a
doll's cot, in the middle of a room like Trafalgar Square!
That window yonder was such a long way off I could scarcely see it,
but I could just defect a Chinaman--the owner of the evil
yellow face--creeping through it. He was followed by another,
who was enormously tall--so tall that, as they came towards me
(and it seemed to take them something like half-an-hour to cross
this incredible apartment in my dream), the second Chinaman
seemed to tower over me like a cypress-tree.
"I looked up to his face--his wicked, hairless face.
Mr. Smith, whatever age I live to, I'll never forget
that face I saw last night--or did I see it? God knows!
The pointed chin, the great dome of a forehead, and the eyes--
heavens above, the huge green eyes!"
He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly.
Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingled
expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.
"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be
bursting my body; the room kept expanding and contracting.
One time the ceiling would be pressing down on my head,
and the Chinamen--sometimes I thought there were two of them,
sometimes twenty--became dwarfs; the next instant it shot up
like the roof of a cathedral.
"`Can I be awake,' I whispered, `or am I dreaming?'
"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls,
and was lost in the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.
"`You are dreaming--yes.' It was the Chinaman with the green
eyes who was addressing me, and the words that he uttered
appeared to occupy an immeasurable time in the utterance.
'But at will I can render the subjective objective.'
I don't think I can have dreamed those singular words, gentlemen.
"And then he fixed the green eyes upon me--the blazing green eyes.
I made no attempt to move. They seemed to be draining me
of something vital--bleeding me of every drop of mental power.
The whole nightmare room grew green, and I felt that I was being
absorbed into its greenness.
"I can see what you think. And even in my delirium--
if it was delirium--I thought the same. Now comes the climax
of my experience--my vision--I don't know what to call it.
I SAW some WORDS issuing from my own mouth!"
Inspector Weymouth coughed discreetly. Smith whisked round upon him.
"This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know," he said,
"but Mr. Norris West's statement does not surprise me in the least.
I know to what the experience was due."
Weymouth stared incredulously, but a dawning perception of the truth
was come to me, too.
"How I SAW a SOUND I just won't attempt to explain;
I simply tell you I saw it. Somehow I knew I had betrayed myself--
given something away."
"You gave away the secret of the lock combination!" rapped Smith.
"Eh!" grunted Weymouth.
But West went on hoarsely:
"Just before the blank came a name flashed before my eyes.
It was `Bayard Taylor.'"
At that I interrupted West.
"I understand!" I cried. "I understand! Another name has just occurred
to me, Mr. West--that of the Frenchman, Moreau."
"You have solved the mystery," said Smith. "It was natural
Mr. West should have thought of the American traveler,
Bayard Taylor, though. Moreau's book is purely scientific.
He has probably never read it."
"I fought with the stupor that was overcoming me," continued West,
"striving to associate that vaguely familiar name with the fantastic things
through which I moved. It seemed to me that the room was empty again.
I made for the hall, for the telephone. I could scarcely drag my feet along.
It seemed to take me half-an-hour to get there. I remember calling up
Scotland Yard, and I remember no more."
There was a short, tense interval.
In some respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think Inspector Weymouth
considered West insane. Smith, his hands locked behind his back,
stared out of the window.
"ANDAMAN--SECOND" he said suddenly. "Weymouth, when is the first
train to Tilbury?"
"Five twenty-two from Fenchurch Street," replied the Scotland
Yard man promptly.
"Too late!" rapped my friend. "Jump in a taxi and pick up
two good men to leave for China at once! Then go and charter
a special to Tilbury to leave in twenty-five minutes.
Order another cab to wait outside for me."
Weymouth was palpably amazed, but Smith's tone was imperative.
The Inspector departed hastily.
I stared at Smith, not comprehending what prompted this singular course.
"Now that you can think clearly, Mr. West," he said, "of what
does your experience remind you? The errors of perception
regarding time; the idea of SEEING A SOUND; the illusion
that the room alternately increased and diminished in size;
your fit of laughter, and the recollection of the name Bayard Taylor.
Since evidently you are familiar with that author's work--
'The Land of the Saracen,' is it not?--these symptoms of the attack
should be familiar, I think."
Norris West pressed his hands to his evidently aching head.
"Bayard Taylor's book," he said dully. "Yes!. . .I know of what my brain
sought to remind me--Taylor's account of his experience under hashish.
Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!"
Smith nodded grimly.
"Cannabis indica," I said--"Indian hemp. That is what you were
drugged with. I have no doubt that now you experience a feeling of nausea
and intense thirst, with aching in the muscles, particularly the deltoid.
I think you must have taken at least fifteen grains."
Smith stopped his perambulations immediately in front of West,
looking into his dulled eyes.
"Someone visited your chambers last night," he said slowly,
"and for your chloral tabloids substituted some containing hashish,
or perhaps not pure hashish. Fu-Manchu is a profound chemist."
Norris West started.
"Someone substituted--" he began.
"Exactly," said Smith, looking at him keenly; "someone who was
here yesterday. Have you any idea whom it could have been?"
West hesitated. "I had a visitor in the afternoon," he said,
seemingly speaking the words unwillingly, "but--"
"A lady?" jerked Smith. "I suggest that it was a lady."
West nodded.
"You're quite right," he admitted. "I don't know how you arrived
at the conclusion, but a lady whose acquaintance I made recently--
a foreign lady."
"Karamaneh!" snapped Smith.
"I don't know what you mean in the least, but she came here--
knowing this to be my present address--to ask me to protect her from
a mysterious man who had followed her right from Charing Cross.
She said he was down in the lobby, and naturally, I asked her to wait
here whilst I went and sent him about his business."
He laughed shortly.
"I am over-old," he said, "to be guyed by a woman.
You spoke just now of someone called Fu-Manchu. Is
that the crook I'm indebted to for the loss of my plans?
I've had attempts made by agents of two European governments,
but a Chinaman is a novelty."
"This Chinaman," Smith assured him, "is the greatest novelty of his age.
You recognize your symptoms now from Bayard Taylors account?"
"Mr. West's statement," I said, "ran closely parallel
with portions of Moreau's book on `Hashish Hallucinations.'
Only Fu-Manchu, I think, would have thought of employing Indian hemp.
I doubt, though, if it was pure Cannabis indica. At any rate,
it acted as an opiate--"
"And drugged Mr. West," interrupted Smith, "sufficiently to enable
Fu-Manchu to enter unobserved."
"Whilst it produced symptoms which rendered him an easy subject
for the Doctor's influence. It is difficult in this case to separate
hallucination from reality, but I think, Mr. West, that Fu-Manchu
must have exercised an hypnotic influence upon your drugged brain.
We have evidence that he dragged from you the secret of the combination."
"God knows we have!" said West. "But who is this Fu-Manchu, and how--
how in the name of wonder did he get into my chambers?"
Smith pulled out his watch. "That," he said rapidly, "I cannot
delay to explain if I'm to intercept the man who has the plans.
Come along, Petrie; we must be at Tilbury within the hour.
There is just a bare chance."
CHAPTER XX
IT was with my mind in a condition of unique perplexity that I hurried
with Nayland Smith into the cab which waited and dashed off through
the streets in which the busy life of London just stirred into being.
I suppose I need not say that I could penetrate no farther into this,
Fu-Manchu's latest plot, than the drugging of Norris West with hashish?
Of his having been so drugged with Indian hemp--that is,
converted temporarily into a maniac--would have been evident to any
medical man who had heard his statement and noted the distressing
after-effects which conclusively pointed to Indian hemp poisoning.
Knowing something of the Chinese doctor's powers, I could understand that
he might have extracted from West the secret of the combination by sheer
force of will whilst the American was under the influence of the drug.
But I could not understand how Fu-Manchu had gained access to locked
chambers on the third story of a building.
"Smith," I said, "those bird tracks on the window-sill--
they furnish the key to a mystery which is puzzling me."
"They do," said Smith, glancing impatiently at his watch.
"Consult your memories of Dr. Fu-Manchu's habits--especially your
memories of his pets."
I reviewed in my mind the creatures gruesome and terrible which
surrounded the Chinaman--the scorpions, the bacteria, the noxious
things which were the weapons wherewith he visited death upon
whomsoever opposed the establishment of a potential Yellow Empire.
But no one of them could account for the imprints upon the dust
of West's window-sill.
"You puzzle me, Smith," I confessed. "There is much in this extraordinary
case that puzzles me. I can think of nothing to account for the marks."
"Have you thought of Fu-Manchu's marmoset?" asked Smith.
"The monkey!" I cried.
"They were the footprints of a small ape," my friend continued.
"For a moment I was deceived as you were, and believed them
to be the tracks of a large bird; but I have seen the footprints
of apes before now, and a marmoset, though an American variety,
I believe, is not unlike some of the apes of Burma."
"I am still in the dark," I said.
"It is pure hypothesis," continued Smith, "but here is the theory--
in lieu of a better one it covers the facts. The marmoset--
and it is contrary from the character of Fu-Manchu to keep any
creature for mere amusement--is trained to perform certain duties.
"You observed the waterspout running up beside the window; you observed
the iron bar intended to prevent a window-cleaner from falling out?
For an ape the climb from the court below to the sill above was
a simple one. He carried a cord, probably attached to his body.
He climbed on to the sill, over the bar, and climbed down again.
By means of this cord a rope was pulled up over the bar,
by means of the rope one of those ladders of silk and bamboo.
One of the Doctor's servants ascended--probably to
ascertain if the hashish had acted successfully.
That was the yellow dream-face which West saw bending over him.
Then followed the Doctor, and to his giant will the drugged brain
of West was a pliant instrument which he bent to his own ends.
The court would be deserted at that hour of the night, and,
in any event, directly after the ascent the ladder probably
was pulled up, only to be lowered again when West had revealed
the secret of his own safe and Fu-Manchu had secured the plans.
The reclosing of the safe and the removing of the hashish tabloids,
leaving no clew beyond the delirious ravings of a drug slave--
for so anyone unacquainted with the East must have construed
West's story--is particularly characteristic. His own tabloids
were returned, of course. The sparing of his life alone is
a refinement of art which points to a past master."
"Karamaneh was the decoy again?" I said shortly.
"Certainly. Hers was the task to ascertain West's habits and to
substitute the tabloids. She it was who waited in the luxurious car--
infinitely less likely to attract attention at that hour in
that place than a modest taxi--and received the stolen plans.
She did her work well.
"Poor Karamaneh; she had no alternative! I said I would have given a hundred
pounds for a sight of the messenger's face--the man to whom she handed them.
I would give a thousand now!"
"ANDAMAN--SECOND," I said. "What did she mean?"
"Then it has not dawned upon you?" cried Smith excitedly, as the cab
turned into the station. "The ANDAMAN, of the Oriental Navigation
Company's line, leaves Tilbury with the next tide for China ports.
Our man is a second-class passenger. I am wiring to delay her departure,
and the special should get us to the docks inside of forty minutes."
Very vividly I can reconstruct in my mind that dash to the docks
through the early autumn morning. My friend being invested
with extraordinary powers from the highest authorities,
by Inspector Weymouth's instructions the line had been cleared
all the way.
Something of the tremendous importance of Nayland Smith's mission came home
to me as we hurried on to the platform, escorted by the station-master,
and the five of us--for Weymouth had two other C.I.D. men with him--
took our seats in the special.
Off we went on top speed, roaring through stations,
where a glimpse might be had of wondering officials upon
the platforms, for a special train was a novelty on the line.
All ordinary traffic arrangements were held up until we had
passed through, and we reached Tilbury in time which I doubt
not constituted a record.
There at the docks was the great liner, delayed in her passage
to the Far East by the will of my royally empowered companion.
It was novel, and infinitely exciting.
"Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith?" said the captain interrogatively,
when we were shown into his room, and looked from one to another and back
to the telegraph form which he held in his hand.
"The same, Captain," said my friend briskly. "I shall not detain
you a moment. I am instructing the authorities at all ports
east of Suez to apprehend one of your second-class passengers,
should he leave the ship. He is in possession of plans
which practically belong to the British Government?"
"Why not arrest him now?" asked the seaman bluntly.
"Because I don't know him. All second-class passengers'
baggage will be searched as they land. I am hoping something from that,
if all else fails. But I want you privately to instruct your stewards
to watch any passenger of Oriental nationality, and to cooperate
with the two Scotland Yard men who are joining you for the voyage.
I look to you to recover these plans, Captain."
"I will do my best," the captain assured him.
Then, from amid the heterogeneous group on the dockside, we were watching
the liner depart, and Nayland Smith's expression was a very singular one.
Inspector Weymouth stood with us, a badly puzzled man. Then occurred
the extraordinary incident which to this day remains inexplicable, for,
clearly heard by all three of us, a guttural voice said:
"Another victory for China, Mr. Nayland Smith!"
I turned as though I had been stung. Smith turned also.
My eyes passed from face to face of the group about us.
None was familiar. No one apparently had moved away.
But the voice was the voice of DOCTOR FU-MANCHU.
As I write of it, now, I can appreciate the difference
between that happening, as it appealed to us, and as it must
appeal to you who merely read of it. It is beyond my powers
to convey the sense of the uncanny which the episode created.
Yet, even as I think of it, I feel again, though in lesser degree,
the chill which seemed to creep through my veins that day.
From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man who once walked,
by the way unsuspected, in the midst of the people of England--
near whom you, personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been--
I am aware that much must be omitted. I have no space for lengthy
examinations of the many points but ill illuminated with which it is dotted.
This incident at the docks is but one such point.
Another is the singular vision which appeared to me whilst I lay in
the cellar of the house near Windsor. It has since struck me that it
possessed peculiarities akin to those of a hashish hallucination.
Can it be that we were drugged on that occasion with Indian hemp? Cannabis
indica is a treacherous narcotic, as every medical man knows full well;
but Fu-Manchu's knowledge of the drug was far in advance of our slow science.
West's experience proved so much.
I may have neglected opportunities--later, you shall judge if I did so--
opportunities to glean for the West some of the strange knowledge of
the secret East. Perhaps, at a future time, I may rectify my errors.
Perhaps that wisdom--the wisdom stored up by Fu-Manchu--is lost forever.
There is, however, at least a bare possibility of its survival, in part;
and I do not wholly despair of one day publishing a scientific sequel
to this record of our dealings with the Chinese doctor.
CHAPTER XXI
TIME wore on and seemingly brought us no nearer, or very little nearer,
to our goal. So carefully had my friend Nayland Smith excluded
the matter from the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged
with some of the events in the skein of mystery which he had come from
Burma to unravel, outside the Secret Service and the special department
of Scotland Yard few people recognized that the several murders,
robberies and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer still
were aware that a baneful presence was in our midst, that a past
master of the evil arts lay concealed somewhere in the metropolis;
searched for by the keenest wits which the authorities could direct
to the task, but eluding all-triumphant, contemptuous.
One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed to recognize.
Yet it was a big and important link.
"Petrie," he said to me one morning, "listen to this:
"`. . .In sight of Shanghai--a clear, dark night. On board the deck of a junk
passing close to seaward of the Andaman a blue flare started up.
A minute later there was a cry of "Man overboard!"
"`Mr. Lewin, the chief officer, who was in charge, stopped the engines.
A boat was put out. But no one was recovered. There are sharks
in these waters. A fairly heavy sea was running.
"`Inquiry showed the missing man to be a James Edwards,
second class, booked to Shanghai. I think the name was assumed.
The man was some sort of Oriental, and we had had him
under close observation. . . .'"
"That's the end of their report," exclaimed Smith.
He referred to the two C.I.D. men who had joined the Andaman
at the moment of her departure from Tilbury.
He carefully lighted his pipe.
"IS it a victory for China, Petrie?" he said softly.
"Until the great war reveals her secret resources--and I pray that the day
be not in my time--we shall never know," I replied.
Smith began striding up and down the room,
"Whose name," he jerked abruptly, "stands now at the head
of our danger list?"
He referred to a list which we had compiled of the notable men intervening
between the evil genius who secretly had invaded London and the triumph
of his cause--the triumph of the yellow races.
I glanced at our notes. "Lord Southery," I replied.
Smith tossed the morning paper across to me.
"Look," he said shortly. "He's dead."
I read the account of the peer's death, and glanced at
the long obituary notice; but no more than glanced at it.
He had but recently returned from the East, and now, after a
short illness, had died from some affection of the heart.
There had been no intimation that his illness was of a
serious nature, and even Smith, who watched over his flock--
the flock threatened by the wolf, Fu-Manchu--with jealous zeal,
had not suspected that the end was so near.
"Do you think he died a natural death, Smith?" I asked.
My friend reached across the table and rested the tip of a long
ringer upon one of the sub-headings to the account:
"SIR FRANK NARCOMBE SUMMONED TOO LATE."
"You see," said Smith, "Southery died during the night,
but Sir Frank Narcombe, arriving a few minutes later,
unhesitatingly pronounced death to be due to syncope,
and seems to have noticed nothing suspicious."
I looked at him thoughtfully.
"Sir Frank is a great physician," I said slowly; "but we must
remember he would be looking for nothing suspicious."
"We must remember," rapped Smith, "that, if Dr. Fu-Manchu
is responsible for Southery's death, except to the eye
of an expert there would be nothing suspicious to see.
Fu-Manchu leaves no clews."
"Are you going around?" I asked.
Smith shrugged his shoulders.
"I think not," he replied. "Either a greater One than Fu-Manchu
has taken Lord Southery, or the yellow doctor has done his work
so well that no trace remains of his presence in the matter."
Leaving his breakfast untasted, he wandered aimlessly about the room,
littering the hearth with matches as he constantly relighted his pipe,
which went out every few minutes.
"It's no good, Petrie," he burst out suddenly; "it cannot be a coincidence.
We must go around and see him."
An hour later we stood in the silent room, with its drawn blinds and
its deathful atmosphere, looking down at the pale, intellectual face
of Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery, the greatest engineer of his day.
The mind that lay behind that splendid brow had planned the construction
of the railway for which Russia had paid so great a price, had conceived
the scheme for the canal which, in the near future, was to bring
two great continents, a full week's journey nearer one to the other.
But now it would plan no more.
"He had latterly developed symptoms of angina pectoris,"
explained the family physician; "but I had not anticipated a fatal
termination so soon. I was called about two o'clock this morning,
and found Lord Southery in a dangerously exhausted condition.
I did all that was possible, and Sir Frank Narcombe was sent for.
But shortly before his arrival the patient expired."
"I understand, Doctor, that you had been treating Lord Southery
for angina pectoris?" I said.
"Yes," was the reply, "for some months."
"You regard the circumstances of his end as entirely consistent
with a death from that cause?"
"Certainly. Do you observe anything unusual yourself?
Sir Frank Narcombe quite agrees with me. There is surely
no room for doubt?"
"No," said Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.
"We do not question the accuracy of your diagnosis in any way, sir."
The physician seemed puzzled.
"But am I not right in supposing that you are connected with the police?"
asked the physician.
"Neither Dr. Petrie nor myself are in any way connected with the police,"
answered Smith. "But, nevertheless, I look to you to regard our recent
questions as confidential."
As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the unseen
visitor who had touched Lord Southery with gray, cold fingers, Smith paused,
detaining a black-coated man who passed us on the stairs.
"You were Lord Southery's valet?"
The man bowed.
"Were you in the room at the moment of his fatal seizure?"
"I was, sir."
"Did you see or hear anything unusual--anything unaccountable?"
"Nothing, sir."
"No strange sounds outside the house, for instance?"
The man shook his head, and Smith, taking my arm, passed out into the street.
"Perhaps this business is making me imaginative," he said;
"but there seems to be something tainting the air in yonder--
something peculiar to houses whose doors bear the invisible
death-mark of Fu-Manchu."
"You are right, Smith!" I cried. "I hesitated to mention the matter, but I,
too, have developed some other sense which warns me of the Doctor's presence.
Although there is not a scrap of confirmatory evidence, I am as sure that he
has brought about Lord Southery's death as if I had seen him strike the blow."
It was in that torturing frame of mind--chained, helpless,
in our ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman's
supernormal genius--that we lived throughout the ensuing days.
My friend began to look like a man consumed by a burning fever.
Yet, we could not act.
In the growing dark of an evening shortly following I
stood idly turning over some of the works exposed for sale
outside a second-hand bookseller's in New Oxford Street.
One dealing with the secret societies of China struck me
as being likely to prove instructive, and I was about to call
the shopman when I was startled to feel a hand clutch my arm.
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